What are the top aspects of successful branding?
Interbrand have released their 2007 Brand Marketers Report. It’s available now for PDF download and makes interesting reading.
Here’s an excerpt from the findings:
“The best practices are now clear. It is equally clear from the report card that the current shape of the branding practice does not put the discipline at the top of the class. Brand practitioners, owners and managers have clearly stated that branding can be done better.”
On page 15 of the report, the question is posed, “Is China a brand?”. An interesting thought.
Have a look at the figure below that gives a run-down of their top aspects for successful branding.
To re-iterate (and also to move away from text in images which is bad for SEO), the Interbrand survey found that the top five aspects of successful branding are:
Consistency
Understanding of customer / target
Message / communication
Creative / design / brand ID
Relevance
Differentiation / uniqueness
Okay, so I’ve listed six. This is because in my opinion ‘differentiation and uniqueness’ is an aspect that deserves to be in the top five, but I couldn’t decide which to drop out.
Here’s the thing, while Interbrand is a leading brand consultancy, and I’m sure they know exactly what they’re doing, I’m all for questionning results and asking ‘why’. So how much would you agree with figure 16 above? Does it change your thoughts about branding or back-up what you already knew?
I’m interested in every perspective here, from novices (of which I am one) to experts.
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8 spot-on reader comments to “What are the top aspects of successful branding?”
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From the small business perspective, it’s the first three: Consistency, Understanding of customer, and Message, that set most companies apart.
And when we’re talking about landing propects on a website, the second two are the most important initially. You have to understand your customer/client in order to know how to reach them. Then your marketing message has to be clear so that you can communicate what benefits your services can add to your client’s life. Then I think consistency comes in as you get traffic, prospects and clients.
For instance, when first setting out to design a logo you need to conduct a good deal of research, to have understanding and to ensure memorability and simplicity in the drafts you create.
Yeah. It’s not written in stone. It’s just what I’ve found to be the closest method to success for small business owners - who often aren’t clear enough about who they are, what they do and for whom they do it.
I’m actually a tad surprised at how far ahead Consistency is from the others. Most of the other items are a percentage or two apart - sometimes not even that much, but Consistency is double the next item in the list. I do agree with it being in the top 5, just surprised by how much it outweighs other aspects.
It’s actually interesting to start putting together some of the items as well. For instance, Differentiation and Uniqueness is important, but I’d say combine it with Relevance and you’ve hit the nail on the head. That brings a combined percentage of 24.4% and so a Differentiation and Uniqueness, and Relevance could, in this very unstable method, fall at #2. Not any sort of accurate method, but just interesting to think about some of these items together and the impact they’d have.
I was surprised too Lorissa. It’s a big jump. What’d really interest me is a list of the participants, the ones who gave the survey answers. Most likely people at the top of their game but it’d be nice to see all the same.
Ahh, now that would be interesting. It could potentially give us more insight into the numbers.
I think consistency IS the most important.
Right now we are changing our logo for the Town where I work. I used to work at a television station as well that went through a logo change. When you make that change you need to change EVERYTHING, letterhead, commercials, bugs, shirts, etc. otherwise the new logo becomes ineffective if people are using old letterhead to send out letters to clients, etc.
A logo change can cost an enormous amount of money! It’s why I tell prospective clients that it’s vital to ‘get it right’ at the beginning, rather than pay for a cheap, under-par logo design that won’t last a year, then end up spending more than you would’ve in the first place for a quality logo.